All things are quantum probability waves until an observer collapses them – so teaches physics. If there is no observer the universe is just all the possible states, all at once. So before there were people, who or what was observing the universe for it to have a definite state? How can there be any definite history of the universe between the big bang and the appearance of observers? Any definite history sufficient for instance to have definite solid planets, functioning stars and emerging evolving biology so as to give rise to the observers.

Physics requires a priori, an observer, to be anything other than an infinite mush of all possibilities.

So what constitutes an “observer” anyway? A plankton? A bacterium? A monkey? Whatever, no observer could have been around early enough to make the universe probability wave collapse into something that could give rise to that observer – it’s a paradox.

The answer is, of course, God. Oh how predictable those Christians are eh?

Now while you digest that, ponder this:

If a load of heavy stuff in a tiny place makes a black hole from which nothing can escape, how come the expanding big bang, which was ALL the heavy stuff there ever will be and all in a teeny weeny tiny place (to start with) didn’t disappear up its own bottom?

The answer is of course it was expanding fast enough to escape its gravity as it expanded faster than light and there wasn’t yet any space to curve into a hole as it was space itself expanding as it went. It wasn’t going backwards in time despite the expansion going faster than light as the time-space was expanding with the light, so the light was not travelling through space and time, it was travelling with space-time.

All this required an observer to actually be rather than potentially be. The only possible candidate is, as previously noted, God.

Never mind the matrix, if you can get security clearance (you will need a genuine reason like attending some sort of event there) take a walk through the Genome Campus at Hinxton, Cambridge, England.

There are numerous chromed spheres, each slightly tweaked to represent various stages of life. The one with a hole represents the stage at which it becomes apparent that we are coelenterates, a biological taxonomical classification meaning we have a gut that opens at the mouth and exits the other end.

The effect of this tableau of embryonic development is to make the long slopes, interspersed by post-modernist buildings, appear as a giant pinball machine, giving a slightly science-fiction sense of unease that things might just roll down and bowl one over or a huge flipper whack out of the sides.

Oldies like me will remember the blob thing in “The Prisoner” TV series. Well here in Hinxton Big brother definitely is watching and don’t even think what escaped chimera might just be lurking up the next level. Best enjoyed at dusk when it becomes eerily empty.

The great soap experiment continues. Links to some earlier blogs about to here and here and here <– click them

Your intrepid researcher would like you to know he is now “suffering” for soapy science. He is enduring electric shocks to add to the knowledge of the world. <grin>

Occasionally like most people I get static electricity shocks, usually when getting out of my car, and only in certain weather if I am wearing certain clothes or shoes.

Since changing to pure minimum-chemical soaps for all skin and hair washing activities and Dead Sea salts for bathing I have been getting ridiculous amounts of shocks off all kinds of objects. My watch also stopped – it is less that two months old and had a new battery in it.

So I am now beginning to think that I have changed the electrical properties of my skin – probably its conductivity.

I had wondered what the long-term effects, possibly ill, of SLS and similar on the skin might be. Especially I had thought that maybe any ill effects might be unexpected and non-obvious, as well as possibly more obvious. Changing the electrical properties of the body, in any way, is certainly nothing I had imagined. It goes to show however that there may indeed be some unconsidered and potentially (little pun there) far-reaching side effects from these almost ubiquitous surfactant chemicals that we may want to question deeply. I have no idea what the changing electrical properties of my body are, or in what way they are being changed – whether it is just something trivial or whether there are more subtle and profound effects. I do know our nerve impulses and brain are electrochemical circuits, so I do wonder if something profound might just be lurking.

Another thing that happened that is hard do describe was when I was washing my hands on one occasion, I had a very strange and fleeting feeling of a withdrawal symptom, incredibly subtle and fleeting, but of the kind one gets when one has stopped using an addictive chemical such as Nicotine.

I recall that Pastor Robert Maasbach of Life Church UK, when he visited our local church and prayed for me, said that I would be freed from all addictions. I was freed from addiction to Nicotine. Are we also being addicted to SLS compounds? Sounds crazy, but I dunno, this is an experiment.

There is a lot said about what Christians believe about sexuality. Mostly it is said by non-Christians with a particular agenda to promote the civil rights of, or simply to promote (yes I did say that) one of a number of non-normative (statistically, and no I didn’t say “normal” I said “normative” so before you “go off on one” please learn the difference between the two words) non-heterosexual sexualities.

I get the impression that because what many Christians believe about sexuality is not the liberal popular current thinking that holds sway in the developed west (this not in many other parts of the world which in these days of moral relativism are presumably entitled to think differently? <grin>), there is also in the popular mind a notion that Christianity or the Bible (synonymous things in the the popular mind I suggest) has a crude and unsubtle approach to all questions of sexuality.

Actually that isn’t so. The Bible makes distinctions between all sorts of sexualities, and deals with them separately. The Bible distinguishes between gender and sexuality, and in various places the Bible separately addresses transsexuality, homosexuality, bestiality, pedophilia, incest and adultery. Of this list, transsexuality is the odd one out because it is not a sin. OK now I have surprised you maybe.

There was no direct modern concept of Transsexualism, but the closest and relevant analogue in Biblical terms is certainly the Eunuch.

In Matthew we see that we should accept Eunuchs (a class that in modern times we would understand to include Transsexuals) –

“For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.” – Matthew 19:12 (KJV)

Also we find in Acts 8:26-40 (KJV) the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch. The Eunuch asks if there is any barrier to him being baptised. Philip replies that as long as the Eunuch believes with all his heart he can be baptised, and so the Eunuch gets baptised.

So, both Matthew in his report of Jesus, and Philip’s actions as led by the Holy Spirit, make it quite clear that we are to fully accept Eunuchs (AKA Transsexuals), and no more or less than any other human being. Transsexualism is not a sin and so should be no bar to the person being a full practicing accepted born again Christian whilst they remain a Transsexual. If of course they desire to change and feel that their transsexualism is a medical or mental problem, they can pray and be prayed for in the same way as any other person with a condition in which they seek to have change.

Oh! Did you think I was going to say something about homosexuals? Another time. <grin>

There is an interesting article in The Daily Beast – “How to mathematically measure consciousness” – about the scientific endeavour to understand the neurological basis of consciousness. When I majored in psychology some years ago my motivation was to understand the root or origin of consciousness. I found enough answers to sate my curiousity and have moved on to other questions, but at that time there was little or no neurological address of the mysteries of consciousness. So, I have followed the growth of the still nascent science of neuropsychology with great interest since those days.

It is not my intention to plagarise the excellently written Daily Beast article so I do recommend you read it. The part of the article that I want to comment on is the part that explains that in quantum physics the act of observation changes what you are looking at, and the article draws the parallel with neuropsychology where looking for the neurological correlates of consciousness may, because the subject has to report the experience as the measurements are made, result in the mechanics of enquiry (reporting) changing the phenomenon (consciousness) being studied.

Now this may just be a coincidental parallel, but I can suggest there are reasons why one should consider things otherwise:

Firstly in the quantum case the observations we know of that affect quantum outcomes are (necessarily) those that ultimately report back to humans. It seems there is an inescapable link between how reality works and how we perceive it, and the fact that we do perceive it.

Next let me now draw the spiritual parallel. By Him all things consist. God holds it together, God makes it exist. When (not if) He “lets go” everything will fall apart, space itself will roll up like a scroll – we all know about curvature of space eh? Nice clear scientifically accurate language in the Bible there.

We are, it is written, made in God’s image. He affects reality by causing it and holding it together in existence. As beings made in His image, is it any surprise that our observations of reality affect it? That looking at a quantum phenomenon changes it? Really that should be no surprise at all to any person with even a rudimentary understanding of the faboulous science book that is the Bible.

So, questions such as “Is consciousness a quantum phenomenon?” – which I know you are jumping up and down in your seats with raised hands desperate to ask – are somewhat on their heads. The right question is more like “Are a quantum phenomena a result of consciousness?”

We have a lot of circularity there, so clearly we are in a self-referential trap. Let’s find our way out. We often think about mind body spirit as if we are triune in nature (ho ho ho see some parallels there?). Okay, lets run with that. We need to look away from mind and body (the world and the consciousness) to the third element. Let’s see how it works with God and as we are made in His image maybe we will see how it works with us.

If in doubt, look to God – He created it all so He has the answers. More pointedly, not only is He “The Answer” in that very general country pastor homily kind of way (nothing wrong with that by the way), but He is the answer (the specifc one we are looking for) to our science question. God is a consciousness and He has a soul. As well as in Genesis hovering on waters, God’s soul gets a mention in Leviticus 26:11 – And I will set my tabernacle among you: and my soul shall not abhor you. This world and our minds are two sides of the same coin, they interact so intimately in a circular way you have to look outside that reality/mind circular loop for the cause of it’s existence. If you look to the soul to provide that answer you are reminded to look to that ultimate soul that we are made in the image of.

We are not a flesh image of a flesh God, our minds which arise created and sustained by God – the world of quantum phenomena and its atoms that comprise that flesh and emergent minds – are not mind images of God. That which truly comprises us is our soul. Our soul is that which God made in His image. We are soul images of God.

Our soul is that which powers and sustains our particle of mind/quantum interaction that we so easily mistake for our essence.
We are IN this world but we are not OF this world.

Things that get said more than once in the Bible are really really important so note this extract from John 17 (KJV) well:

13 And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.15 I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

He is talking about YOU. You, the bit that is really you, not the body that if you lose an arm or a leg you are still you, not the mind you that dies every night and is resurrected every morning, but the soul you, the real you that powers the mind-body illusion of you that scientists are finding it hard to study. As God powers this world “illusion” that we are in (no the world is real because God makes it so but you get my drift), so those images of God that are our souls power the mix of our minds and the quantum phenomena that science is trying to grasp.

And here’s a thing: When you consider a child affected by Zika virus with ancephaly or anyone with mental or physical disability – and have the temerity to question why God made that child or to think about murdering a foetus by abortion that in world terms might be considered imperfect (and just who among us is perfect eh – cast the first stone!) – look beyond the mind and body to the soul and see the real value of that person and know God has a purpose for them that you cannot fathom, so show some love and respect to God’s creation of that brother or sister of the triune you and your triune creator.

You and they are more wonderful than you think, you are indeed more wonderful than your thinking, and more wonderful than you are capable of thinking. Fortunately you are not your thoughts, you are your soul. You are exactly as wonderful as God spoke you into being, and as His image, exactly as wonderful as Him.

28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Psalm 27:5King James Version (KJV)

5 For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock.

We are spiritual beings. Often said, but seldom understood. There is a widespread recognition by atheists, and even some non-atheists that we have some ineffable quality that is more than the sum of, greater than the synergy of, and not fully explicable by the deconstruction of the synthesis of, our consciousness and memory. That essence of us, each as individuals, is something outside the embodiment of self-awareness that psychology has tried to address, and more recently has tried to explain as something that can be atomised by salami slicing to death the emergent nature of consciousness back into sub-thoughts, sub-processes and self-referential internal communication. Not to say these internal dialogues and assemblages of thought do not provide the internal mirror that bounces our thoughts back and forth like the mirrors in a laser before consciousness emerges like a coherent beam, but we instinctively “know” there is more to us than that.

Who are better placed than the owners of consciousnesses with the intimate lifelong experience of being self-aware to possess the insight to realise, however dimly, that there is more to a living human being than just a dead computer looking in a mirror as it pulls itself up by its own bootstraps?

That is the recognition that we are spiritual beings – we each have a soul. It is mighty fine to say consciousness is illusory, but if there is nothing other than the so-called illusion that can be experienced, and no comprehensible and satisfying explanation of why a set of processes results in a conscious alive embodied feeling existing experience, then it I will argue that the alleged mirage that they would say is my experience of living has more reality than the intellectual desert that it graces. I would say I have empirical evidence of being it, which trumps such ephemeral theories.

So then, if the soul is not something that is explicable in the physical chemical processes model offered by neuropsychology, perhaps that is because the soul is not made of things that impinge chiefly in those mundane 4 dimensions (X, Y, Z and time) that we best perceive. Physicists would say there are more dimensions than those, and both I and the Bible (see Ephesians 3:18) agree with that. The soul is not of this “flatland” world. The thing that is really the unique living hub of each of “us” merely intersects and interacts with this world. We are truly, as they say, “in the world but not of it.” Our earthly bodies are, not what we are.

There is a gateway between these other dimensions and the ones we most easily perceive. The rolling of dimensions is referred to in the bible, physics calls it the curvature of space, the universe we are in being sort of meta-hypersphere. All that is fine, it explains quantum entanglement and lots of lovely stuff, but that’s not what I’m about today. Today’s thing is about translation. That geometric matrix of spatial coordinates manipulation that transposes like an architectural drawing presentation being redrafted from first angle into third angle.

Translating your soul so that it no longer intersects our mundane world is what going through the gateway is. The gateway is Jesus. In Him we live. Jesus is God. God is everywhere. He doesn’t need to move, to translate from intersecting to non-intersecting. Because He is there and here, He is the conduit for us to ride in and out of our set of dimensions to the others. He is the way. A way, like a highway, a road, a gate. The gate is narrow, He is the only way.

The bible is not unscientific mysticism, it is an account of truth. Truth that is very very hard to grasp even to our modern scientific minds that are just starting to see how complex and strange the universe really is, and hard to recognise because it was written in the language of people who as farmers and fishermen thousands of years ago did not have the words for physics and math and topology we have. Get past that and you can see that the supernatural is completely explicable and consistent with science. It is not magic or nonsense. Jesus said it simply and plainly. He is the way the truth and the life.

Hmm, the life. Don’t forget that bit eh? There are a lot of ways things can connect, behind the scenes. Like two points on a plain, that are really the ends of one line that curves below that plain.

When Satan comes and wants to cut you off from Jesus (oh yes, he is coming to get as many as he can), from the life of your actual soul, to bring you true death, remember, Jesus can whisk you away into Himself, BEFORE it even happened, because He is everywhere and every-when. He has told you this, in his book, how salvation works, and has given clear instructions how to get it.

Romans 10:13King James Version (KJV)

13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

My thanks to Maasbach radio for playing some very nice music as I wrote this tonight, and as I finished writing it for very appropriately reminding me, it’s a two-way street. Once you live in Jesus, He lives in you. You can then be here and not get cut off by Satan. The intersections are permanent once they are done through Jesus. Eternal death is no longer a possibility.

John 10:9King James Version (KJV)

9 I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

There are many UFO / Aliens sites, books and videos that claim the US government or various secret agencies and organisations are reverse engineering alien technology taken from crashed alien spacecraft or bartered or donated to use by aliens from other planets or dimensions.
I think its time to give a somewhat different than usual Christian perspective on this.
Firstly do entities or creatures from other worlds in terms of aliens as they are conventionally thought of exist, and are UFO’s their vehicles? Secondly are we getting technology from them by reverse engineering or copying it? Finally if these two things are not true, then what really might be happening that makes a lot of people believe these things?
As Christians we know that the evil one is known as a prince of the air. We also know that he works by deception, doubt, lies, and undermining us in any way he can. We know there are such things as demons, which are entities. Most Christians also think that humanity is unique and that life may even be unique to our home Earth.
Given this fairly firm underpinning of knowledge and fairly reasonable empirical theory, how should we interpret the conventional notion that there are UFOs flying around with beings from other worlds that are intelligent like us but that spontaneously become alive and evolved in the same we did but separately from us and are more advanced than us.
The evil one would like us to believe in evolution rather than creation, so getting us to believe it has happened elsewhere and indeed may be commonplace serves his purpose. He would like us to believe we are nothing special, indeed if we believe we are an inferior species that undermines us a bit and makes us feel insecure so that suits his style just dandy. If in the process he makes us think we have manipulative secret organisations in our society that are using the technology from the aliens in sinister ways and keeping secrets from us, he sows discontent and doubt and even paranoia. He can use belief in aliens in a many ways to give false fears and false hopes.
He with his demons can easily create illusions and manifestations that give rise to false sightings, unpleasent and inexplicable encounters with beings, and numerous real physical effects, all agreeable with the underpinning reality of the universe that there are indeed many dimensions and there are indeed other beings in them. Its just that these other dimensions are places God created and the beings are the angels and demons, not a bunch of aliens.
You are using a computer device of some kind right now, because you are reading this on one, or someone used one connected to a printer to make the piece of paper you are reading this on. The chips inside that computer were developed from transistors, which were developed from the discovery that a wire in contact with a crystal of semiconductor like Germanium or Silicon could be used as an amplifier and a logic gate in the same way a thermionic valve could be. Bell labs in the 1960’s did not copy an idea from aliens when they invented the transistor. They developed the ideas that started with the cats whisker crystal radios from 1906 and thermionic valves from 1904. Humanity created by God deserves the credit for the transistor, not non-existent aliens.
UFO’s and aliens are a very clever deception being used by the evil one to promote godless ideas of evolution, undermine the idea we are in any way special, make us feel inferior, instil false fears, sow mistrust amongst us, sow confusion, divide opinion, create false hopes, and distract us from the truth, which is that God is real and Jesus is our Lord and saviour.
Oh sure, UFOs and aliens are real, in the same way the evil one is real, and they really have the stamp all over them of the one that is putting them out there for us to believe in.
The only reverse engineering is the psychological engineering the evil one is using these fake aliens to do in people’s heads, turning them away from Jesus.
Now go to tune into some nice inspiring Christian radio, and be happy that God made us intelligent in His image, able to create things like transistors that we can use to glorify him and dispel the evil one’s false ideas.

So vast planet-wide oceans are not a crazy idea – they are commonplace and seemingly occur wherever there are planets and other planet sized rocks.

The crust of our planet that everyone lives on used to slide around on the core lubricated by a layer of water in between. It was made that way as we are told.

Genesis 1:6-8
“And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.”

The bible uses accurate descriptive language.
If you read it more literally in the proper translation (the original KJV) you can learn scientific facts, properly. Jesus, the author, was called Rabbi. Rabbi means teacher. Rabbi means appointed leader. Which Rabbis do you trust?

A earth was bit like the shell of an uncooked egg sliding around over a huge yolk lubricated by the white of the egg. The egg gets knocked and spins and something cracks the shell a little bit. If the egg cracks in a few places but holds together pretty much, you will get some leakage of white though the cracks and bits of the shell will collapse directly onto the yolk as the layer of white in between has escaped. Egg white covers the surface of the egg, but it drys out quickly in many places.

If this happens to a real planet with a planet-wide underground ocean the flood comes up out of the ground and the land collapses onto the lower solid part beneath the water layer as the incompressible water is forced out through the cracks. Can you imagine the force of a whole continent squeezing out a whole ocean though tiny gaps? It would be the most amazing fountain you could have. Can you imagine those fountains of the deep? Take look at a space picture of the water volcano on Europa.http://www.seasky.org/solar-system/assets/images/io03_sk12.jpg Europa’s fountain is tiny.

As the surface shell collapses huge amounts of pulverised rock are dissolved into the water then settle as many layers as the different particle sizes and densities settle at different rates. Geologists call layers of rock strata. You can see 21 feet of lots of different strata at Mount St.Helens where people actually stood and watched the 21 foot set of layers form in just 24 hours. Many layers of rock formed in just a day.

The many animals killed in the flood settled according to their densities and sizes also, and ended up in the different layers. They were buried suddenly so they didn’t rot. The wet earth leeched salts and minerals into them under hight pressure of the weight and they became like stone. Geologists call these fossils. They look like they got there gradually and change according to the layers, which gave people the idea of evolution, which was wrong. Evolution happens to relatively simple things like bacteria like they get immunity to antibiotics and new variations of diseases come along, but big things like cows and elephants and us can’t do that because the intermediate steps are not viable. Occassional variations (epigenetic, teratagenetic and other mutations) to big things mostly just die so don’t get to breed and pass it on.

Before the surface layer collapsed the air was low in moisture, but as day and night temperatures varied, some water percolated up through the ground as mist which was ample to sustain life. Something about the position of the planet, the state of its magnetic field and the solar wind drove off the water from the atmosphere quickly but the daily mists replenished it constantly from the vast underground ocean.

The planet began to shift position and the stress of this caused the surface layer collapse.

Genesis 7:11In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. 12And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

Water welled up out of the earth.

The previously dry air became supersaturated with water and it rained as it had never previously done.

Genesis 7:17And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. 18And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. 19And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that wereunder the whole heaven, were covered. 20Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. 21And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: 22All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. 23And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. 24And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

So it was bad for the things living on the planet, but it needed a good wash because all the sin was making it stinky, and there was a rescue plan which we know about in detail which worked, so a few of the important species survived, including us.

The flood was over quickly because the conditions that caused the water in the atmosphere to be taken away into space persisted long enough to dry out much of the huge flood. The planet ended up in a new stable orbit where the atmospheric drying effect no longer happened, and was left with some of the floodwater as oceans still covering about two thirds of it’s surface in the areas where the collapsed surface had fallen deepest.

With a new moist atmosphere that didn’t get evaporated into space in the new stable orbit, all sorts of things like rain and rainbows could happen for the first time, and once the crust had collapsed it couldn’t ever happen again. The big bits of crust still moved about a bit and although there was still a huge amount of water down there in pockets, the movement of these plates with no lubrication they scraped on the inner layer and heated up due to the friction, making lot of magma which some of the water down there dissolved into. The symptom of all this was the tectonic plates, earthquakes and volcanoes we still have today.

Unfortunately the survivors have so far not all lived happily ever after, and an even worse disaster is coming.

The earth will wobble on its axis as the fabric of our four regular space-time dimensions that were stretched outwill roll up like some of the the tiny other of the ten dimensions already are. It will curl into a singularity closed forever. The bible uses accurate descriptive language.

The good news is we know about this and there is a rescue plan.

Basics:

The Bible is true

Genesis is true

The flood that Noah saved us from is true

Revelation is true

Jesus is the truth, the way and the life

Jesus as God made the whole universe, he made you, he loves you, the earth is broken and not worth repairing because it’s in a universe that is unstable, the forces of darkness are also in this universe, so he’s going to let it collapse into a singularity taking everything in it locking the bad away forever. He knew all this from the start, but he’s doing it this way so you get a choice, so you have free will with a real soul, alive like him who made you in his image, and are not just a clockwork toy.

The end of this universe will not be nice for anyone left here, but he can save you.

He will make a new universe which is called a new heaven.
He will make a new earth.
The bible uses accurate descriptive language.

He will take you there just before this one ends

He has told you everything you need to know in his living book.

Salvation is yours if you want it but it’s not compulsory, you have to choose it. You have choose him. A simple call on Jesus by name will do, you choose to change then call him, he will do the rest. Everything he has put in his book is true, and so is that.

The bible is an interactve book – you get to choose your own ending – I recommend the living happily ever after option.

Animals, as far as we know, have little or no appreciation of anything aesthetic, finding mountains, stars, storms, oceans, tigers, forests, or puppies pleasing is not really in their gift. Seemingly such feelings have scant evolutionary purpose. Perhaps an argument against evolution, perhaps not. We humans also find wonder and awe in understanding how a cell works, in how atoms and quarks work. We can be impressed and inspired by the works of other humans – bridges, dams, paintings.

Rosetta is NASA’s wonderful ambitious mission to get information from a comet. Wonderfully it worked. We have breathtaking images of a tiny little, fragile and temporary world. It was called Rosetta because the Rosetta stone was an archaeological object that helped us translate previously lost ancient languages and tell us something about the past.

NASA hopes that by understanding a stone in the sky, the comet, it may tell us about the past of the solar system. Evolutionary biologists wonder if it could tell us if chemical building blocks for life came from outer space.

Well I think it has already told us something different. I think we sent Rosetta because we are curious. I think we find the work of the people who made Rosetta brave and edifying because we can admire creators through their creation, and that what the mission found, a grey rock, beautiful not because it is pretty but because we are seeing something God made for the first time. I think we humans share a love of beauty with God because we have souls that are given us of God.

I think Rosetta is a key to understanding that we love Creation because we recognise there is a Creator, who created us in His image, and that curiosity and aesthetics are uniquely human because He made us.

I watched the moon landings, I have even done some work for NASA connected with them. Rosetta is, in my opinion, as a space nerd and child of the space age, the bravest loveliest mission since the moon. Not the most colourful or expensive, but the most ambitious and successful example of how we reach out to better know our universe, and inevitably then our Creator.

NASA did not intend any such thing, but God put that high rock there for us to one day climb, on our journey to better knowing Him.

WELL DONE NASA!

Exploration leads us to the Creator. The crew of Apollo 8 read from Genesis on Christmas Eve 1968 as they orbited the Moon. The recognition of God such awe of being in His incredible creation brings is inescapable. We have all felt that feeling. It is God calling you. Look at a newborn baby and feel it. You are feeling what He feel as He sees that baby, that He made in His image, that through Him we make in our image.

Psalm 143:5 NIV
I meditate on all your works
and consider what your hands have done.

I had a vision of looking into Jesus’ eyes and seeing the beautiful blue of earth from space. He is the light of the world, our maker.

God can hold the universe in His hand. The same God fills us as the Holy Spirit. So we are full of stars.

Silly? Well maybe, but remember it next time something challenges you or makes you fearful or worried. There is nothing in the universe greater than God. All is within His grasp and power, and He is within you.

There are some more concrete little stars inside you if those are a bit too abstract:
Our bodies contain several different twelve-pointed star-like phosphate spoked molecules. An important pair of such molecules are Chi A and Chi B.

Chi A gains a phosphate per spoke per hour from Chi B. Then when Chi A is full, Chi B removes a phosphate per spoke each hour back from Chi A.

So you have two 12 hour phases.
It looks like an AM and PM clock because that’s exactly what it is. It’s our body clock.

God divided the day and the night each into 12 hours for us long before the Babylonians decided on base 60 and base 12 for their counting (the system we still use today for our time).

An old outdated concept of God was that of a divine watchmaker. Maybe not quite such a naiive notion after all.